Budget shows Mich.'s contempt for students

How about state news takes an active role in organizing students to protest at the capitol this year and every year in the future for better higher ed funding. THAT would be cool.

I have lived in Michigan for a total of about 14 out of my nearly 19 years here on Earth. The rest of the time has been split between various states and England. I always had my heart set on studying and living in Michigan, but now I am not sure whether I want to stay here for another three years to finish my degree let alone the rest of my life. The state is obviously an idiot because it continues to cut funding to our future- to education. I don’t want to raise my family in a state where I know that they are not going to have adequate teachers or resources. The state needs to wake up and realize that education is our future, or else this state is going to be a ghost state.

I couldn’t care less about K-12 funding. Unlike most future parents, I’m not going to be a schmuck and appoint all educational duties to the public school system, rife with corrupt and incompetent unionized teachers. I will educate my own child to my fullest abilities outside work and school hours. I suggest all college educated parents do the same.

Education isn’t just getting certificates from institutions. Being well educated, and educating is a lifestyle choice of knowledge, reading, critical thinking, and effective dialogue. Abe Lincoln never went to college, chew on that, and he was more well educated and philosophical than most of you phony baloney Ph.D.s coming out of the Universities.

As for the cost of college, we need to reveal the real problem.

Employers discriminate against those who gained experiential knowledge but never obtained their fancy pants paper certificates from brand name institutions. It’s a form of discrimination that is not covered under the civil rights act, and it should be.

People want it to be impossible, but it’s not. I know so many people who barely graduated high school who would make better engineers than half of the j@cka55es I graduated with at MSU. And, they can write, read, speak, and listen in proper American English, unlike many international incompetents we’re giving paper certificates.

People are not entitled to a college diploma.

Of all the STUPID things to cut. Education! I am SURE there were better area’s to look at. Like their salaries for instance. I bet they all held on tight to that, along with their perks! Makes me SICK.

While I agree that education should be funded as fully as possible people need to realize that if you want things you have to pay for them. Government, like anything else, isnt free so you have 2 choices:
1) higher taxes
2) less programs
You can’t have lower taxes and more programs.

Finally, on to a pet peeve of mine: for crying out loud stop screaming about the pay of the legislature as a means to “solve” the budget crisis. It makes you look like a complete twit. How dumb do you have to be to think that cutting something which is 0.001% of the state budget could somehow possibly equate to any meaningful benefit? While any independent observer can tell you the current lawmakers are terrible, cutting legislators pay is merely an emotional knee jerk option which does absolutely nothing to help the situation other than make people feel better by taking out their frustrations on someone.

How about we revoke term limits and get people who know what they’re doing (and are responsible to the voters when they’re at their most powerful).

Besides, if the pay is too low highly qualified people (who’d have to give up high paying jobs) or non-rich people wont join. Not exactly what you’d want.

Spartan68 and MP are some of the reasons why education is broken in the first place. Instead of breaking out some awesomely uniformed opinions, what not study the field from the inside. To slander teachers and unions is an absolute joke. It is this sort of thinking that will keep perpetuating inequality in American society and fostering so many of the problems that plague poorer states like Michigan today.

Please educate yourselves and quit depending on inaccurate information as your platform to complain.

If people understood the process and how the state budget works we would not have to deal with all the cries for help.

It is mind blowing that people give nearly 30% of their income to taxes and have no idea how they are distributed.

Below is the link for the Higher Education budget summary:

http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/2009-2010/billanalysis/Senate/pdf/2009-SFA-4441-N.pdf

pay for it yourself.

wow: if you expect only the public schools to make your children critical thinkers, then don’t expect to exit wage slavery anytime in the next five generations of your bloodline.

If you look at the history of higher education in America, when people ‘paid for it themselves’, only the wealthy went to college. Because the wealthy make up such a small percentage of the American population, most of the people who have gone to public universities like MSU, UM, Cal-Berkeley, and other excellent schools would not have a college education.

The undergraduate colleges at private universities have a fraction of the enrollment of public universities. Harvard’s undergrad enrollment is a little less than 7000, while MSU’s is over 36,000. Do you really think the U.S. can stay competitive in technology, medicine, business, etc. if we eliminate the majority of the educated workforce? Why do you think we have an advantage in innovation in the first place? Its because of the many public university graduates who didn’t pay for it themselves.

Education is considered a public good that accrues to the benefit of the entire nation. Educated graduates create jobs and wealth. If you eliminate public support for universities and ask students to pay for it themselves, you will destroy the future of the economy.

The Military is always an honorable and justifiable way to pay for your education.

What are ways to lower the cost of higher education?

Maybe we need more of an old-school American work-ethic?
You know, those guys that worked 10 hours a day gladly to support their families and they didn’t complain about it.

I don’t mind paying taxes to help make my country a better place to live in, I don’t know why everyone else should. Move to Mexico.

Take pride in your job, even if it sucks. Make a difference, or at least believe that you are making a difference. Everything balances in time.

“The Military is always an honorable and justifiable way to pay for your education.”

…as long as you’re not gay, or, I would argue, a woman (the likelihood of a woman being sexually harassed or raped is absolutely unfathomable).

As for the good ol’ American work ethic, that’s a grand idea, except many companies don’t want to let their employees work 10-hr days. Many companies today are requiring their employees to take furloughs (=unpaid days off) to keep their jobs.

How many people do you know who are working multiple part-time jobs and are barely making ends meet? I know plenty…not to mention the lack of health care.

Your mantra of “Be Happy or Leave” is ridiculous and a coward’s way out. If I don’t like something, I don’t just quit on it; I work to make positive change.

It’s amusing to see that some of you actually expect to find a good job in Michigan after graduation. The truth is most of you will end up in or near Chicago were there is mosr opportunity.

“The Military is always an honorable and justifiable way to pay for your education.”

Nah. DADT makes sure that I cannot serve in the military. I am out and not going back into the closet anytime soon.

I work four jobs (only 2-3 days a piece as they’re all I can find) and go to school full time. I am paying for college on my own. Parents don’t give me a cent, in fact I help them.

That $1000 is a lot of money that we needed. Thankfully MSU is helping us out by giving what was rightfully promised. Not sure what a lot of us will do next year. All I know is I am moving out of Michigan the very first day that I am able to. If I wasn’t getting instate tuition, I’d have been out of here by now.

Re: Not So Straight. For making an open intention of leaving the State of Michigan no matter what, you should be penalized and forced to pay out of state tuition. The residents who pay income taxes to educate their state should not be subsidizing education for the workforce of other states. It’s absurd.

Good for you, you’re gay, I don’t care one way or another. As far as this marriage rights business, is anyone barging into your home and preventing you from having homosexual sexual relations, co-habiting, holding hands, kissing in public, etc.? Oh, that’s right, it’s this business with health insurance.

Tangent alert: lower marginal health insurance for heterosexual married couples is intended as an insurance policy on the generative, biological product of marriage: children! You’re insuring the future health of children. This does not biologically apply for homosexuals, so stop complaining about the one and only one benefit of gay marriage: lower health insurance premiums.

This is why not even domestic heterosexual partners get lower health insurance premiums: the relationships are historically more transitory and produce fewer children.

It’s counterintuitive, but you need to have lower premiums to get more of what you want: in this society it’s healthy children who would make effective pieces of meat in the U.S. military industrial complex.

He/she made a comment about why the military won’t allow him/her to serve in it and therefore can’t use it to pay off school and you go on an anti-gay marriage rant? Wtf? Are you ok in the head?

Gee thanks for judging me spartan. Someone told us to join the military so that we can pay off student debt. That is not an option for me as I am not going to hide who I am. Fwiw, I come from a staunch military family. Every single one of my male family members has been enlisted and I lost my brother in law in Iraq. Do NOT turn this into a gay marriage issue as it has nothing to do with the topic.

And guess what? At LEAST 10% of my class will move out of Michigan, so should they be forced to pay out of state tuition? It’s not our fault the state of Michigan can’t get their crap together to bring jobs back. Why should we be forced to stay here when there are no jobs? My parents and I have lived in Michigan most of our lives and paid taxes just like everyone else, so I am entitled to instate tuition as much as the next chick.

Get over yourself.

By the way, I am not gay. I am bi and I am engaged to someone of the opposite gender. And you know what? Our children will probably not produce children because of medical problems. So children in marriage is a moot point for us. But again, thank you for judging me.

Spartan86, do you not pay attention to anyone? Make him pay out of state tuition? Have you seen the news with MI and Detroit having largest unemployment rates? Myself, and most my class woul dhave loved to stay in state, but guess what? We couldn’t. Why stay for no job, or a low-paying job you are overqualified for when you can go somewhere else and get a career. I am sick of this argument from people in Michigan who blame students for “leaving the state”. We are leaving for work!

I can tell you, as a resident of North Carolina, the education system here is much more organized, helpful, and inexpensive. I pay ~$3000/semester to take 18 credits at NC State, a school just as prestigious as MSU.

Run while you still can. It’s not going to get better anytime soon.